There’s a lot of news out there people. But possibly the most entertaining thing in my in-box doesn’t have to do with green materials or green buildings…. it revolves around a penguin.

The Environmental News Network reports that Norway has knighted a king penguin named Niles Olav. Sir Niles Olav is the third penguin to serve as the mascot of the King’s Guard. The first mascot penguin was chosen in 1972, and named after then-King Olav V. Sir Niles Olav (the penguin) lives in the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland and was promoted from regimental sergeant major to honorary colonel-in-chief in 2005. Just think, I never knew a penguin could be a knight! For more on this, click here.

In other (green building) news, Portland Architecture reports that Houston developer Hines has withdrawn from the competition for the San Diego city hall project, leaving the door wide open for Gerding Edlen and ZGF, though it doesn’t guarantee them the job. For more on the project, click tag ‘Gerding Edlen’ below or click here.

Jetson Green reports on a Yale grad school student who built her own tiny house that is off the grid. The home will cost about $11,000, is 8′ x 18′, and has a sleeping loft, storage loft, study nook, kitchen area, living area and bathroom.  For more, click here.

And Landscape + Urbanism has some awesome photos of green rooftops in NYC. For more, click here.

Happy news hunting! (penguin photo courtesy of ENN. Tiny house courtesy of Stephen Dunn, via Jetson Green). 

This is the first in a series of guest posts by different representatives of the Northwest Building Efficiency Center. This post was written by Vicki Zarrel. 

It will be interesting to watch as San Diego picks from competing designs for a new city hall in downtown San Diego. Last week, two designs were revealed, each with goals for achieving LEED ratings.

Developer Gerding Edlen of Portland presented the most ambitious proposal. The tall, curved structure (at left) would be surrounded by about 2 million square feet of private development. On-site wind and solar panels would generate energy for the entire complex, and an onsite wastewater treatment and reclamation system would bring about a net-zero water system. The Gerding Edlen proposal is designed to meet or exceed LEED platinum standards.

The other development proposal, by Houston-based Hines Corp., is designed to qualify for LEED gold. Hines is proposing a four-story glass city hall with a 19-story office building across the street (below). Hines calls the design “the most viable, cost-saving and low risk proposal.” A company press release gives no specifics on the proposal’s energy or water-saving measures.

For more information, see the article and reader comments in San Diego’s Union-Tribune (both renderings are also courtesy of the Union-Tribune).

For those of you not from the Pacific Northwest, Gerding Edlen Development Co. is widely regarded here as one of the best role models for sustainable project development. People want to know what they’re working on - and what they think is the next big thing in sustainability, as evidenced by my story on their Casey Condominium project being the DJC’s most read and most e-mailed story on Friday. 

So when I spoke with Mark Edlen, Gerding Edlen’s managing partner last week, and he said within a year LEED platinum would be “an absolute yawner” in his office, you better believe my ears perked up. Instead, he said it’s on to net zero buildings that consume more trash than they produce!

We were talking about the platinum rating because The Casey (at right), a $60 million, 61-unit building, is supposedly the first LEED platinum multifamily high rise in the world.  

It’s also the firm’s first foray into “eco-luxury”  - a combination of ultimate ecological consciousness and luxury (something not often associated with green buildings).

In fact, it is widely agreed upon that the green building movement has done a particularly bad job of combining function and beauty, something that most agree must become a stronger focus. But Mark’s focus behind developing green projects is that a project should not compromise anything from site to construction to occupancy comfort, just to be sustainable.

So why not go after green luxury, the same way you’d go after green office or hospital space?  What do you think? Can a building be both?

To read a local perspective, click here or here. For real estate stats, go here. For more go here. If you’re interested in Gerding Edlen, you can read about another one of their project’s in a December story I wrote here.

But if you want to learn more about the Casey, its green features, the difficulty of building green multifamily to such a high level, and the building’s art component, there’s only one place to look: the story in the DJC. Check it out here.